Hello ATT, I've been a member for a bit now, mainly a lurker, the modeling and painting sections in particular. I'm a fresh blue skin making my first 40k army.
And well, I'm working through it so I thought I'd post pictures along the way! I have a lot of photos for the first post so be warned!

First off are some mini modeling projects with suits, I don't have very many pictures of when I first started :/ Oh well I still have plenty (I have 44 to be precise but I will only show what I think is necessary).

[Please pardon these first images, they are old and blurry/large because my camera was strange. Please bare with me]

First fireknife suit


Commander head and fireknife


As you can see I use the fairly common head modification on some of my suits, I like it. I found it from this site (not sure if it’s the original)
http://warhammer-tau-army.blogspot.com/2009/01/tau-battlesuit-conversions.html

Now I try to distinguish between my suits drastically, my fireknives I have deemed the assault squad and have the modified head as well as an extra thruster on the back, I gave them very dynamic poses to show movement.
My Deathrain suits I have given the opposite effect. I try to make them look heavy and slow. Here are some early WIP pictures to give you the concept:

Front


Side

I believe that’s Heresy Online on my screen, a good place to go for tactical advice and list making since it is not encouraged here.

It’s not all that complex of a conversion, the missile racks are what’s taking time, I'm new to plasticard and gs so I put them to the side to work my way up to them. Currently I think I can start work on them again soon, I'm in painting phase. Oh and don’t mind the regular missile pod, its just there for reference, I am also planning on cutting off one of the rows of the once landing gear to make it more scale to the model.

Out of some bits I made a fw sized jetpack, Burstcannons I have found to be much fun when using for bits (All pictures after this are taken as of today, hopefully they are better )

FW scouting ahead and a squad leader signaling to his troops





Flash-forward a couple months of schooling and buying models and a never ending list of paint pots, I have begun painting. After a couple different schemes, horrible looking models and general practice this is what I’ve settled on.

Stealth suit (my first officially painted model)





FW




Pathfinder





XV8 (the one shown earlier, hes my only painted suit so far, fresh off the press)







And what I’m currently working on, the Piranha. Here’s my current progress with painting it, it’s a little slow going since it’s my first and I’m using electrical tape for the edging





The piranha is inspired by this man
http://forums.tauonline.org/conversion/55107-tau-piranha-conversion-sorta-wip-image-heavy.html
I did however flip the wings to make it appear more jet like (I’m an aviation guy so it bothered me the other way). All it takes is a couple slots of plasticard to flush it up, in my opinion it comes out cleaner than gs unless you can mold it very well ( which some of you can (jealous)).

And here’s a couple group pictures of my small blue men





Well this is all I have for now, I'm hoping to finish my piranha sometime soon as well as get back to some modeling. I’ll try to mix it up and keep it exciting so I don’t fizzle out.
Comments and criticism is welcome

-Blind

P.S. sorry about the image size, they seem fine when I upload them but turn out huge when posted. If I need to resize them feel free to send me a message

Edit: Resized all pictures! Sorry it took so long, but hey, it makes my painting look better

Edit: Updated XV8 Suit pictures

I really like the dynamicism you have with your Fire Knife suits. Their poses are very well done I see you have your Death Rain suit blue tacked up. Have you finalized the design for that yet? I do get the heavy and slow impression from the way they are postured. I really like the way you handled the leg and arm poses. The head sitting in front of the chest gives it an odd silhouette in my opinion. A suggestion, you can put the head back on top of the torso, and put some bits around the collar and give it a "high neck" sort of flavor. OH! Cut one length of tread off the landing strut and fit one to either side of the helm? I don't mean to direct you to do anything on your project, I just wanted to give some constructive criticism

Those devilfish landing feet I have always wanted to use in a mod, but i could never really figure out a good way to use them.

Hey Blind

Good to see you posting some stuff! I like your Firewarriors in particular .

On to business; you really should re-size the images. The current size makes it kind of a pain for anyone with a smaller screen size. There are plenty of free image editing programs out there (I use MS paint).

Looking forward to seeing more!

- Null

@Nethos I can see what you mean with the heads, I'm still experimenting with them but I think with some modifying it can look good from the chest. The idea is that it gets a very steady field of view and platforming with those heavy missiles racks. Another reason is it keeps the head out of danger, missiles firing off might scorch it or at least blind it from the smoke trail. Cutting off one of the rows on the landing gear has been part of the plan all along though, I'm glad im not the only one

@Null Resizing them right now actually! I'm glad you like the FW, they are based off Ender1610's when it comes down to it.

Hey Blind, I'm looking forward to seeing your resized images - at this time they are way too big and I really can't tell what's going on. I know you said you're working on that, but until then, could you put a warning in the title? Some of our members with slower computers might crash ^^;

Resized all the pics and changed the title back. phew glad thats over with
Enjoy and comment!

-Blind

Thanks for the quick edit. - ST

I must say, I absolutely LOVE your Piranha conversion.

Heh you and me both
Heres a tut-in-a-pic of how to do it. Hope its moderately useful, its an extremely simple conversion.

Alright so I finished my first piranha! I decided to go with an urban camo and I think it turned out well. I decided to mirror the pattern on both sides with a slight color variation. This due to the fact that camo is simply a pattern copied over, and if you're going to field an army, it takes far too long to give each vehicle a completely random paint job, stencils and automated painting would do the job, thats my defense in realism/fluff at least.












I left the bottom of the wings black for the fact that in an urban environment, you don't want any reflected light, you want to stay dark and blended in.
Break lights, vent effects, and some engine details will be touched up later when I get the colors I like for them.
Hope you like it, now on to modelling I think

Very nice.

In World War 1, the bottoms of many combat aircraft were painted a shade of blue that made them blend in with the sky. I know the Piranhas aren't exactly "aircraft", but I do very much like the concept. They look awesome.

Just a suggestion I picked up from painting my White Scars a few years ago, from the looks of it you tried to put white directly on the black undercoat. This made it so you had to put a lot of white in order to cover up the black right?.

If you put a layer of grey on top of your black and then white on top of it it makes it so you don't have to put as much white and helps it look really clean. Also watering down your paints a little bit can help to give a more even coat.

If I'm wrong and you didn't do any of what I think then just ignore me . I gotta say I really like how the paint scheme turned out on your Stealth Suit and I am deffinitly going to be copying your Pihrana conversion

Hmm the grey before white sounds like a great idea. What color do you suggest a lighter grey (fortress grey) or a darker grey (codex gray)?

I do water my paints done though, quite a bit actually. The suit seems a little splotchy because I was a goof ball and didn't seal the gap between the jetpack parts, and because it could actually use some touch up to get a more consistent white. Other than that I just have a great 12 megapixel camera that likes to show all my mistakes

I was suprised when I lurked the internet for piranha conversions and didn't see this one actually. Although I have found that all the amazing conversions and the best tutorials always end up here

@ Ell'ran
Thanks! Yeah I was tempted to paint the bottom a dark grey but really I could go either way. My army is based off of an urban winter environment as to provide some insight on the color choices. When deciding my theme I was split between urban and winter......so I chose both The blues and greys are for blending in with an overcast city during the winter months and the white on FW and suits of course for snow.

Very nice. Well then maybe a darker gray on the bottom would be more appropriate given the theme you're going with. The gray would be meant emulate the clouds overhead.

I'd suggest useing fortress grey

Alrighty thought so but figured I should check with the master I'll have to try this out on my next models, thank you!
For now though I'm working on those death rain suits again, other than the fact that its fun to mess around aimlessly, I could use some missile pods on the field

Oh I'm far from the master. I do conversions and fluff and if I had the money or knew someone with enough skill I would pay others to paint my entire army.

But I still like to have my models look as nice as they can and when i was making my White Scars they looked horrible because it took so much white to cover the black undercoat. Finally I made a post on B&C that said HELP!!! and that's what they suggested. I tried it and it worked beautifully.

Hey Blind, I'm really liking the progress so far. Excellent work converting and posing those models. The Piranha especially stands out to me. What progress have you made on the Broadside? I like the idea, yet I feel like it could be better executed...hmm...I'm gonna have to think about that.

As for your color scheme, it really reminds me of ender1610's cadre. I think I am partial to grey, urban/winter camo looks. Anyway, very well done on the camo. Just make sure to give it some highlights! Also, I was looking at your Pathfinder and I can't help but think that the clothe could be made to look better with a wash of Badab Black. It would really help to give it depth.

I have moved this thread to modelling because of the awesome progress here. Keep up the good work!

@ Wolfs16
Thanks Wolfs16! The color scheme is based off Ender1610's actually , well at least his fire warriors in particular. I'll make sure to wash up the Pathfinder for ya, and I really do need to highlight my models. I have never done so before and so I'm a little hesitant, I don't want to ruin my painting references!

Today I was working on that deathrain suit again (it wasn't a broadside Wolfs16 I actually don't have any broadsides currently, can't stand their mirror image of XV8's) and I broke my scalpel

Witness the horror for yourselves:


None the less I carried on by messing around with Blue Tack as a temporary substitute for greenstuff, just to get the juices flowing and see my options. I went ahead and put the head back on the top of the torso to test some looks out as Nethos suggested. I like the look forming, this is what I was able to create with my sprue clippers and some blue tack







As you can see the jetpack will most likely be moved up, its simply removing the pack, and placing the gap normally between the two vents behind the top vent. This gives a nice area to work with on that missile rack (which has been shortened one row) and help to achieve the top heavy look. Of course the missile rack itself still needs a casing made to give it a realistic look and venting system, but that will have to be done after the suits integrity isn't held together by glue plato. I know its a lot different than the first but with the head set further back and with guards, it achieves a similar style i think.
So what are your thoughts on the newer look?

CC is always welcome

-Blind

Oh and the reason for the blue tack arm is because I can't find the upper arm piece for the life of me. I haven't touched the suit in some months so I fear the worst.

Washed the Pathfinder!




The was definitely gives the legs some depth to them, I'm tempted to paint the boots but upon basing the units they won't blend in so much. That and I think it would be likely that they wear large black boots for slogging through snow and pavements.

Looking good Blind! I think the Pathfinder is greatly improved by the wash, but now it is time to get to highlighting that bad boy! Just try this: using the base color of your clothe, highlight the edges of the fabric that stick out. You'd be amazed at how easy, but also how effective it is. As for the armor, what color are you using there again? It would look ten times better with some highlights to those panels.

As for the optics and lenses, do you know how to paint a lens effect? Follow this guide here and you will see how easy it is.

Oh and your Deathrain? It is a Broadside now. Seriously, I must have missed that obvious statement. Anyway, I like the direction you are going with it, but try not to make the pose so static! The head is starting to remind me of Dark Gear's ATT contest entry here. Maybe worth a look.